Sixty percent of consumers sometimes eat lunch at their desks, according to Mintel Menu Insights lunchtime eating report. This puts increased pressure on contract management companies to keep up with customer desires, food trends, and the latest equipment to ensure they are providing what desk-bound customers want.
Sodexho Inc., based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, operates 26 Pandini’s fast-casual restaurant concepts throughout its campus, corporate, and government services accounts. Its signature Labretti sandwiches are served on freshly baked and folded 8-inch pizza dough.
One popular version is a peppercorn and mushroom sauce, says Rob D’Orsi, director of product development for Sodexho’s Retail Brand Group. After baking, a Labretti may be topped with a small salad or fresh greens, with dressing allowing for a hot and cold component. Fifteen flavors are available. “It’s more popular than our regular sandwiches rotating through the menu,” D’Orsi says.
Artisan and made-to-order sandwiches rule at Philadelphia-based Aramark’s Bleeker Street Café and Soluna Café and Bakery. “Fresh is foremost, which lends well to the ingredients that are ever changing,” says Scott Zahren, Aramark’s director of culinary development.
While customers at both concepts rave over paninis, the most recent spin on the toasted sandwich is the mini panini served at Bleeker Street Café units. Two small sandwiches make up a full order, allowing for more flavor variety, Zahren says. The most popular is the Southwest chicken with chipotle mayonnaise, grilled chicken breast, tomatoes, caramelized onion, and pepper jack cheese on the sour-dough batard. Flavorful crusty breads like wheat berry and ciabatta are also popular. As for cheese, asiago is a hit, he says.
For the health conscious, Monegues, made-to-order delis run by Aramark, host a FreshWorks sandwich promotion featuring a sandwich each week that has 500 calories or less. The sandwiches are promoted as “big on taste, not on calories.” What the sandwiches lack in mounds of cheese, they make up for in bold flavors with chutney or relish toppings, such as the grilled portabella with tomato ginger chutney; Asian chicken with spicy slaw; and roast beef with apple slaw. All are served on ciabatta bread.
For operators with limited labor and space, Sara Lee Foodservice in Downers Grove, Illinois, recently introduced a line of toasted sandwich selections for those with TurboChef Tornado ovens. After more than two years of development with TurboChef and its high-speed equipment, the result was introduced in February—the Hillshire Farms–branded Toastworks, a line of four lunch sandwiches made with trendy breads and ingredients.
The sandwiches come frozen, 12 per case. “Just thaw them for 24 hours in the refrigerator with a prep time of one to one and a half minutes in the TurboChef. The delivery is a wonderfully toasted and warm sandwich, heated perfectly through,” says Ed Dubin, Sara Lee’s vice president of innovation for foodservice.
Sandwich choices include: Buffalo chicken (breaded Buffalo-style chicken patty with provolone cheese on a French roll); Italian (rosemary herb ciabatta with capacola ham, hard salami, and provolone cheese); and Philly cheesesteak (Philly steak meat with peppers, onions, and Swiss cheese inside a bollio roll).
Scoping the competition’s sandwiches is one way to keep up, but when Steve Ches, consulting chef for Pret A Manger, a sandwich chain in New York, is out snooping, he says he’s looking at the unique flavors in any dish for ideas he could apply to sandwiches.
Pret A Manger is the largest sandwich retailer in the United Kingdom and now operates units in New York City. Its cold freshly made sandwiches are sliced into triangles and merchandised in cardboard and plastic packages. Guests come in and select from a wall of fresh sandwiches.
One of the most popular sandwiches, the Queens Coronation, was developed in the U.K. for the queen, Ches says. The sandwich includes thinly sliced grilled chicken with a proprietary curry mayonnaise dressing layered on top of seven-grain bread with toasted almonds, mango chutney, and baby greens. “They are great flavors with fantastic sweetness from the chutney. We can’t take it off the menu,” he says.